


In The Cold Light

by Southbroom



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Ficlet, Post Season 7
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-08-05 08:48:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16364720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Southbroom/pseuds/Southbroom
Summary: A disorientated Jaime's thoughts when he first arrives at Winterfell.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "In the cold light I live, to love and adore you  
> It's all that I am, it's all that I have"
> 
> \- Mumford and Sons ft. Baaba Maal, "There Will Be Time" from "Johannesburg"

I awoke with a gasp. A downing man sitting up in his bed, drawing his first air in months.

 After so long traveling in the ice and snow, I was comforted by the fact that my toes felt warm, and my nose too. How is it that you only come to appreciate the good things in life once they are stolen away from you?

I peered past the furs covering my body, and gazed at the chamber I found myself in. Wooden, mostly. A stool in the corner. A table with oddities stacked on top.

 I blinked when I saw her standing by the door. Tall as a spruce, yet somhow even stiffer than usual.

 “Are you alright, Ser Jaime?” she addressed the floor.

 I adjusted the pillows behind my back.

 “I’m warm.” I said dazedly. I have never had a talent with early rises. I tried to conceal my yawn, but it was no use. After I was done, I felt like an overgrown boy.

Brienne was still looking at me. 

Of course she was. I couldn’t believe I was here either.

There was a fire in the corner that shone on the wench’s armour, painting it in hues of orange and yellow. She watched me, looking at the armour I’d given her, and then glanced back to her feet. What was going on? She looked like a child caught stealing cakes from the kitchen.

“King Jon requests a meeting with you.” Brienne spoke, “But only once you are ready.”

“At once.” I said, preparing to stand up. She took an visible step toward the door.

“I shall see you later, Ser Jaime.” She said, slipping out, and then I was alone.

That was odd. It wasn’t like the wench to look so… _guilty_? Usually her formal honour came out it such strong waves that it left _me_ the guilty fool.

 _Kingslayer_ , her voice echoed in my head.

 _Your crimes are past forgiveness, Kingslayer._ It wasn’t the soft tones she used with me in this chamber, but the one she used when I mocked her from my slouching position in a rowboat.

I stood up, all my bones protesting as stumbled to the table.

There sat an assortment of things. A drawstring leather bag of Dragons. An empty cup. A knife. Rags. Candles. A leather stroll. I paused, fumbling it open with my useless hand. Inside, there was two maps.

One, the recognisable shape of Westeros, ingrained into my mind from countless lessons as a child and from battle plans on my lord father’s desk. And...

The memory of Cersei’s map of Westeros painted on the tiles of her private quarters left my thoughts empty for a moment. Cersei, my beautiful sister, my twin, who corrupted and betrayed me until I abandoned her.

_Oh, fuck loyalty!_

My ghost hand twitched all of a sudden. I looked around for my golden hand, remembering what I’d done with it.

The more north I went on my horse, the more the winter winds bit at my skin. The cold inhabited my sister’s golden hand like a disease. It had gotten so cold one evening that it burned the sensitive skin of my stump, through the countless layers of bandages I put there.

I had cast if off of a cliff, screaming into the winter wasteland for no one to hear.

The other map in the scroll was less recognisable. It took the shining chorography of the words “ISLE and ISLETS of TARTH” to orientate myself. This map was considerably more detailed, with fine sketches identifying the various landforms on the island, other lettering labelling various villages on the coast. My eyes rested on “Evenfall Hall” and under it “Seat of the Lord of House Tarth”.

This was most defiantly Breinne’s chambers, I concluded. No other sod in this keep would possess a map of the wench’s island. Where did she get it? She must have carried around since she left her home. That must have been six, seven, eight years ago? I imagine her stuffing the scroll into her boots, examining it when she felt homesick. A feeling of jealously arose in my chest. I never did feel homesick about the Rock anymore. Now, even the treasured memories of exploring our family castle with my sister were tainted.

If this truly was Brienne’s chambers, where did she rest while I was here? How long had I been here? I hardly remember finding the gates of the Stark’s ugly castle, only the relief upon finding the towers of Winterfell and then… nothing. More white snow, more white sky and then the wench’s sapphire eyes.

Mayhaps she had been watching me for a long time.

Mayhaps not.

My boots and other possessions took up the other half of the table, completely dry of snow. That must have made me asleep for a long time. Nothing dries quickly in the clay coldness of winter.

I pulled on my clothes, finding a roughly stitched rabbit hind coat under all the layers. Attached was a note.

 _These are extra furs which Podrick found for you_ , it read in blocky handwriting. _King Jon has requested to meet you in the Great Hall as soon as you have recovered. I should be in the quad, should you need me, Ser Jaime._

The letter sure echoes what she told me before she skittled away like a cat. Maybe Brienne had been watching me sleep after all. She had no other reason to come into the room since her note explained everything.

I smiled at her foolishness.

When had she become embarrassed by watching me do anything? She certainly wasn’t bothered when she watched me wear my own hand as a necklace.

She never shied away from meet my eyes in a private tent, not unlike this chamber.

_It is your’s, it will always be your’s._

Gods be good! Even under Cersei’s piercing gaze in the Dragonpit, Brienne marched up to me, pulling me by the shoulder and demanding that _This goes beyond houses and honour and oaths. Speak to the Queen._

And the words that echoed in my head all the months that I ventured to the winter wilderness.

_Fuck loyalty!_

Where did the valiant wench of my thoughts and dreams go? Why did she shy away from my gaze now.

Where did _my Brienne_ go?

x

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whilst trekking through the North, Podrick makes a few observations.

‘The Lands of Always Winter’ always sounded like a bit of an exaggeration when Lord Tyrion first spoke of them in his chambers. My old master was prone to drama, but never fishwife tales. His descriptions of the far North, the Wildlings and size of the Wall always sounded just like something out of a song.

 

Since I can remember, I have loved songs.

 

I adore listening to the bards inside inns, just focusing on the stories that the singers share. My Lady, at first suspicious of my interest in staying awake for the music, would pester me to rest. She would argue that we had a long journey ahead of us, and that a peaceful night in a cot does not happen often.

 

Well those were her words, but I suspected that My Lady wanted me to stay as far away from the other travellers and their mead as possible.

 

House Payne has a reputation for being quiet. It is true, my Uncle Ilyn was silent as a crypt, but one could hardly blame him. I am sure that my uncle had plenty to say, but for reasons still not all-too-clear, he has been condemned to silence and solitude.

 

My father was not like that, I was told. Mother said that he would jape and jest to her once he overcame his shyness, but shy he was. For long.

 

But my mother, oh, she was not a Payne.

 

A lady of House Brax of Hornvale she was, with dark eyes and dark hair. Always a smile upon her face (she was known for that).

 

My mother used to sing to me, when I was small. She would place me down in my cot, pull the covers over my body and tuck me in, singing some or other song as she did so. I cling onto the handful of memories of her on these freezing nights, when Lord Tyrion’s stories of the Lands of Always Winter are less and less of a fantasy.

 

Although my Lady is not much at all like my mother, she does remind me of her in some ways.

 

My lady is tough, with thighs like an anvil and reflexes like a bat. She is a true knight, honourable like in the songs, but she is stoic. Frustrated, often times, and more often with me.

 

But past her armoured chest plate lies a soft heart. A softness that no one would guess was there and fewer people have seen.

 

No one’s horses were adjusting well to the snowy climate, least of all Brienne’s. I could see it was suffering, walking slower that the rest, so I offered my lady my horse. She refused (stubborn as always) and, three days later, whilst the creature was trudging through snow waist-deep, she removed her helm from her pack and into the snow.

 

“Want to throw away the rest of your armour too, wench?” He had sneered.

 

She had given him a look over her shoulder.

 

“Better yet, leave a treasure for the undead to find once they conquered the continent.”

 

Ser Jaime was the only person who got away with such teasing. Anyone else – Gods imagine the Wildlings – who hinted at a lack of respect toward Brienne, was met with an icy glare or Oathkeeper.

 

That night we made camp in a snowed over forest a few days from Eastwatch. I had joined Miran and a few of the other squires in search of firewood. Once I returned, my Lady was fretting with her horse once more.

 

The poor creature gave a cry and she hushed it by drawing the reigns toward the ground.

 

It was obvious that the horse was unwell. The weeks of cold and wind and snow – so much snow – was killing it.

 

I had my sympathies. The horses did not wear any furs like the soldiers. Some of them had died along the way. Their riders either hitchhiking with another or walking in front with the Wildlings.

 

For the most part, a dead hose was a good thing, as horrible as that sounds. It meant freshly butchered meat in the morning, but I prayed that would not overcome her horse.

 

I watched as my Lady cupped the horse’s face, waited for it to calm down. After a few strokes down the animal’s long nose, she started whispering things to it.

 

Even a brutish female warrior famous for bitting the Hound’s ear off had her motherly instincts. Had softness.  

 

Ser Jaime came close beside her and the horse startled. Ser Jaime, apparently also with a soft spot for the creatures, knew how to pet it.

 

“Does he have a name?” Ser Jaime enquired.

 

“ _He’s_ a mare.”

 

Ser Jaime stepped and looked at the horse from the side, as if to check what lies between its legs.

 

“Indeed she is.”

 

“You didn’t believe me.” She said with a confidence that went away as quick as it came.

 

“I always believe you, Brienne.” He said.

 

I was affronted. My Lady, who kept her formalities strict, did not recoil to the Kingslayer stood shoulder-to-shoulder beside her.

 

I remember trying to take off my Lady’s armour in the beginning and her fierce denial that she needed any help.

 

Her recoiling at touch, as if I had hurt her. 

 

Now, she stood flush with a man, no less a Lannister, and quiet comfortably so.

 

 “Arianne.” She said softly, stroking the horse’s ears, “Her name is Arianne.”

 

Ser Jaime said nothing afterwards, but I saw he smiled at her. The two stood looking at the horse for a good few minutes before I got bored and left.

 

I was reminded Ser Bronn’s crude words at Riverrun. Bronn, where ever he may be, was not right about everything. My Lady was hopelessly too shy for the sharp-tongued Kingslayer. For all his pursuits were met with Brienne looking away and making excuses to be elsewhere.

 

Sometimes, I wish she had the confidence to respond to his touches.

 

I doubt that Ser Jaime has near the honour that my Lady deserves, being the Kingslayer after all, but there is a softness she has for him. The Gods alone know why.

 

Her affection is not is not something you might spot when first see her – mannish, tough, unapologetic as she is.

 

But I remember on our long quest to find Sansa Stark, what she would do. In the evenings at the fire, Brienne would take out Oathkeeper. In a pensive mood she would polish each ruby, every golden engraving that he gave her.

 

There is a an even quieter quietness around her when she thinks of him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime gives Brienne a gift.

To think, I had never seen any of it on Tarth. One of the things that intrigued me as a girl was my Septa’s stories of the snowmen which she had created as a girl. It had snowed on the island when she was a small, which must have been a hundred years back. This was extremely rare, and a story told often by older people on the island. I remember one my Septa’s many repetitive orders were

 

“Put that scowl away Stranger will come and take it for you! Oh young lady, the day you start listening to me, it will _snow_ on Tarth.”

 

When I left home, I saw snow for the first time. It had been from very far away, but the snow on the mountains of the Vale left an imprint on my mind. It had come as a surprise back then. Before that, in the many summers of my childhood, I had only seen the stuff as illustrations in my father’s small library.

 

I had been so frightened then, galloping off to Renly’s camp. The argument between my father and I was still fresh in my mind, and my badly-cropped hair felt strange, where there had been long plats for all the years before.

 

I wanted to serve Lord Renly. If anything, I think that my father, Septa Roelle, everyone else always knew that I was going to run away. It had just been a matter of time. Sometimes I look back and wish I had done it better.

 

Those snow-capped mountains in the distance had filled me was fascination, with hope. Mayhaps all that I sacrificed to become a knight would be for good.

 

But now snow had long since lost its exotic appeal to me.

 

Some scouts in our division had marched ahead to spy the best route for the party to travel through. It was challenging, navigating through the powder, but even more so in the small mountains before the sea. When they did not return, they were found buried under the snow.

 

One of the Free Folk explained that by irritating the snow in the crook of a mountain, it sometimes comes down in a wave. And once it covers the body, the powder becomes rock-hard, trapping the people under a layer of snow.

 

Four good men had been lost to that snowslide, and it created a new feeling of hopelessness amongst the soldiers. My horse had died the same day. I had insisted on butchering her myself. It did not seem right for anyone else to do it, as I was the one that brought her to this frozen place that took her life.

 

Podrick helped. It was a long process. I had taught him to cook rabbits, but this was a monumental scale that I had never attempted before. Taking off the skin was more difficult in the cold. By the time I cut the meat into segments, the air was freezing the muscles hard. I had to borrow a special sawing knife from the Wildlings to complete the job.

 

Pod built a fire and started cooking our piece underneath it. After washing my hands in an icy bowl, I struggled to get the heat back to my fingers.

 

I stood, looking at the pile of firewood being constructed to burn the four snowslide men. And then turned my attention to what was left of a loyal companion cooking under the flames.

 

Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t turn south the moment I completed Lady Catelyn’s oath. We are all on the front line – the first line of defence between the living and the dead. I was going to be burnt in a fire soon, if I was lucky. If anything, I was going to freeze under the ice or rise as monster that contributed to the end of men.  

 

Then I saw Jaime.

 

He was across the rows of pavilions, looking purposeful in his strides.

 

 _Stop it_ , I tell myself when a familiar feeling of lightness rises in me. It happens whenever he is near. _Pathetic. There are greater concerns in this world than Lannister._

 

A few mornings back he sat beside me when Podrick cooked the morning meal for our section of tents. Very close to me. With his knees brushing mine and his steamy breathes hitting my face.

 

And then there was the japes… so many of them and all so dreadfully silly. And I will myself to keep a straight face, to stay calm, because I can only image what the others think. The ugly woman knight and the Kingslayer… a spectacle for the ages.

 

After the fiasco in the Great Hall, Ser Jaime’s name was dragged through the mud again. He was sentenced by Daenerys Targaryen to fight on the first line with the forces going to East Watch.

 

I was doing the very thing for which I volunteered, fighting the dead, but it was different for Jaime. He also wanted to fight in this war, as he often repeats, but for a cripple with one hand there was little hope. It is a death wish, even more so than the rest of us. I think that is why he can so confidently stroll through the camp and through the snow. All that he ever wanted was to be a hero and die an honourable death.   

 

I watched him deposit a pile of firewood and then walk his way toward me. My breath caught when he did not stop, when he did not keep a polite distance, but march right up to me.

 

He had been doing that for weeks, but I am still not used to it.

 

Without a comment, he tugged my wrist and folded open my clenched fist.

 

“For you, my Lady.”

 

I could see Pod peered over at us in the corner of my eye, seeing the bright object in my hand. It was such contrast to the white around us, that I wondered exactly it was.

 

“Berries?”

 

“I believe so.” He said, smiling.

 

“Where did you find them?”

 

“Just behind that Stark pavilion over there. On a frozen bush.” He paused, “They might be poisonous. I know nothing of Northern _fruits of the forest_.” He elaborated.

 

I did what I hoped was a smile, but based on the amused expression on his face, I assume it wasn’t.

 

“Now now, wench, don’t go away.” He said, grabbing my arm.

 

Anger rose in me. It was too much all of a sudden, him being so close, him always besting me with his words. Before I could think, words were spilling out of my mouth.

 

“Don’t call me wench. I’ve told you before.”

 

“I don’t mean to. It just slips out.”

 

“Don’t mock me.” I snapped.

 

His expression fell. “I wasn’t.”

 

My fingers closed over the berries in my hand. My grasp was so strong that I could feel their coldness through my gloves. I worked up the courage to address his face. The Lannister smug was gone, replaced by something I had seen in a bathtub and in a tent and in a dragon pit.

 

The snow, which everyone hated so much, filled me with a child-like fascination again. It was in his hair and on his beard. He blinked, still looking at his good hand on my elbow, and I noticed a perfect snowflake in his eyelash.

 

Then his gazed darted up and I was filled with a dread so deep that it made me feel heavy. And frozen to the spot.

 

“You have the most beautiful eyes, Brienne. It is the only thing I thought of when you left to find Sansa. Sapphires…” he trailed off.

 

“But you stayed. With her.” I said, not knowing where my boldness came from. In all the nights we had sat together speaking, the subject of _her_ had remained a clear taboo.

 

He dropped his hand. I cursed myself for spoiling a good moment.

 

“I did. I was stupid.” He said, “I’ll never forgive myself for throwing away all those years with her.”

 

He looked dejected again, and I was overcome with a desire to fix it. He did not deserve this. All the teasing and sneering from the world. From the Dragon Queen and even the Starks. Everyone misunderstood what and who he was.

 

“I don’t blame you, and I don’t blame her either. We don’t get to choose the ones we love.” I parroted, remembering the first time he had told me those strange words. 

 

He smiled then, and placed his hand upon my cheek, pressing lightly. I was paralyzed with what he was planning to do next.

 

“In time, good wench.” he said after what felt like days of him just looking at me.

 

 _What time_ , I wanted to ask him, _How much time do we have left?_

“My Lady, Ser, er-“ Podrick stuttered, “A raven came from Lady Sansa.”

 

“Good man, Podrick.” Ser Jaime said, taking the scroll from him.

 

“No, I mean. The letter is for Lady Brienne only. The messenger said so.”

 

I startled. That can’t mean anything good.


End file.
